Call for Submissions is open now!
Complete the submission form and send it to rhizomemind@gmail.com by September 30, 2025. Website: https://www.rhizomemind.com/festival
 

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is a quintessential blues narrative composed for the twenty-first century. The film embodies perspectives commonly found in blues-oriented expression, including songs, autobiographies, and interviews, not to mention Black fiction and poetry that thematizes and/or reflects blues-oriented music and blues criticism as well. But before academic scholars considered blues worthy of analysis, Langston Hughes wrote critically and creatively about blues music and the suffusion of its principles throughout much of Black expressive culture. In fact, he first observed a blues performance in his early teens, well before Mamie Smith’s recording “Crazy Blues” (1920) launched the classic blues era.

International Conference | Frontiers and Un/Belongings in US American Culture

Universidad de Valladolid, Spain | November 24–26, 2025

 Call for Journal Articles Now Open  Sensing Euphoric and Dysphoric Atmospheres (Volume 4) Following our symposium, we invite authors to submit papers for publication consideration. 

Our fifth annual online event addressed the theme of ‘sensing euphoric and dysphoric atmospheres’ in festive, celebratory, and ritual cultures. Taking an embodied perspective, we seek journal articles that focus on the role of corporeal perception in making sense of lived experience.

Journal Articles(Volume 5)Call for PapersMaking, Remaking, and Limitations  Following our symposium, we invite authors to submit papers for publication consideration. 

During our sixth annual online event, we discussed 'making, remaking, and limitations' in festive, celebratory, and ritual cultures. Our questions focused on: How and why do people continue to make and remake culture? In what ways do they experience limitations when making and remaking culture, if any? What is the significance of the making and remaking of culture and whom is it for?

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Thinking of the Children: Book Bans, Censorship and Literature for Young People An online conference hosted by the University of Münster
11-12 February 2026

In January 2025, just four days into the new Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced that they had ended the so-called “Book Ban Hoax” by dismissing 11 pending civil rights complaints related to book bans in public schools and eliminating the position of Book Ban Coordinator – a position created by the Biden administration to address intellectual freedom violations in schools and federally-funded institutions.

Research in Contemporary World Literature (RCWL) invites submissions for upcoming issues. As a leading international journal committed to cutting-edge scholarship published by the University of Tehran, RCWL publishes double-blind, peer-reviewed research on modern and contemporary literary production across global contexts, with a primary focus on literature emerging after 1945.

Originally founded in 1994 as Journal of Foreign Languages and reconstituted in its current form, RCWL has evolved into a vital platform for the exploration of literary texts, movements, and theories that traverse cultural, linguistic, and disciplinary boundaries.

Call for Papers: “Confinement and Freedom”

2025 Arkansas Philological Association Conference

University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Nov. 14-15, 2025

Across a career spanning over 40 years, French-born filmmaker Leos Carax has firmly established himself as one of the most unique and innovative voices in modern European cinema. After a period writing criticism for Cahiers du Cinéma while he was still a teenager, Carax released his debut film Boy Meets Girl (1984) at age 23 to international acclaim. Carax followed up on this early promise with the futuristic neo-noir Mauvais Sang (1986), the romantic drama Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991), and the Herman Melville adaptation Pola X (1999).

2027 will be the 50th anniversary of Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison’s third novel and one of the author’s more popular books alongside The Bluest Eye and Beloved.

This forthcoming volume of essays will provide new readings of the novel for high school and undergraduate readers just in time to celebrate Song of Solomon’s 50th anniversary. 

It seeks to advance Morrison studies and foster critical appreciation of the novel, especially in light of new directions in literary criticism since 2010.

Scare Packages:

Horror Anthology Films of the Twenty-First Century

edited by David Scott Diffrient

We invite papers that explore the theme of memory and reparation, and demonstrate the interconnectedness of the past, present, and future by focusing on any of the four spheres of reparation: economic, political, cultural, and psychological.

Please send your 200-word abstract in French or English to sawuni@crimson.ua.edu ( Sawel Awuni)  and to ldjamess@iu.edu (Lolonyo Djamessi)  , along with the title of the paper, your email, your institutional affiliation, and a brief one-paragraph bio. Please send your submission by September 30. Thank you!

Hybrid 08: IMITATION | Call for Abstracts 

Deadline: June 24, 2025

https://www.indusvalley.edu.pk/research-and-publications

Copy That! – Hybrid 08 Seeks Abstracts on ‘Imitation’ 

Hybrid, the annual peer-reviewed journal published by the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, invites submissions for Volume 8 centered on the theme ‘Imitation.’  

South Atlantic Modern Language Association Conference 2025

This panel will discuss the historical and contemporary relevance of alternative sources and ways of knowing. From Gnostic spirituality and ancient traditions to the 19th century spiritualist movement, secret organizations and conspiracy theories, esoteric knowledge has always stood in stark contrast to traditional means of information gathering and learning. Rather than debunk or ridicule, we will attempt to understand the fascination with alternative ways of knowing and determine the significance of what it means to promote beliefs and thought processes that speak to those who do not find satisfaction with mainstream thought.